Meet Bar Levy

 Nov. 23, Thanksgiving Day - a.m. at ACSA, New Delhi

Meet Bar. She is a yoga instructor from Israel who teaches at the American Embassy Club (ACSA) in Delhi. She is all about peace during these unsettling times when our part of the world is burning and reeling with attacks, kidnappings, revenge killing, air strikes, and hate rhetoric - when many of us are united by our common concern for our families living in the Middle East, and by the loss of lives.

Bar opens each yoga session with reflections that she reads out loud to her class. They are centering thoughts of mindfulness, peace, and wholeness. They sound like poetry. A balm to the soul. 

Today, as it is Thanksgiving Day, the focus is on gratitude. 

Bar opens with: “Focus on what you have and not on what you want” (or even need). 

Focus on what you have and not on what you want. What a great motto for a class, and what a great value to instill in young people. And not just young people, but adults of all ages. 

In her opening today, Bar encouraged us to think of the people we love and then to think of the place we call home, and where we feel safe. I thought of my homes that are no longer my homes, My parents’ home in Beirut, that we are about to empty out and where we spent many days hiding in the bathrooms due to “squirmishes”, street combat, air strikes, and missile attacks. Our home in DC, that is rented out and where we spent happy days with our children. When Bar encouraged us to think of our warm bed, my current home in Delhi came to mind. (See the full script here) 

Bar has been teaching at the US embassy club in Delhi since June of this year. Yet her confidence, her relationship with her body, to movement, the way she directs her students, accepts them, and encourages them to be appreciative of where they are, attest to her long and deep relationship with movement, dance, music, and the aesthetics and psychology of mastering one’s body in a positive fashion - a lesson she has learned the hard way. 

Bar’s relationship with yoga was not love at first sight. Far from it. She tried it in her twenties, once, after years of very eclectic and intense dance training, expecting it to be a relaxing time, found it not to be so at all, and left it behind. Her next class did not occur until a few years later, when she backpacked in India for two months. She fell in love with the culture, the food, and the people, but yoga… not so much! 

She saw a lot of people practicing yoga in India and tried one class in Rishikesh, purported to be    “the yoga capital of the world”! Her class was in a beautiful setting, a rooftop on the Ganga river, the holy river for Hindus. As idyllic as that setting was, to Bar, it was just OK. She walked away, unconverted into a yogi. 

Bar’s background as a dancer is intense and professional. She trained from age four until age 18, with the crème de la crème in Israel, international teachers that had trained in France, Russia, and Israel. From age five until high school, she attended a dance studio that was quite eclectic and included lyrical dance, hip-hop, jazz, and flamenco. She was quite taken by Flamenco and by the diversity of dance styles. Dance was joyful and gratifying to her, and she decided to take it up professionally and applied to one of Israel’s top Arts secondary schools. The Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, named after a famous Israeli cellist, has produced many famous actors, musicians, and renowned artists in many fields. 

“I remember when I got the acceptance letter. My mom picked me up from school and she hadn’t opened the envelope yet.” Everyone congratulated her on such an honor, and the dance studio she left behind in order to join Thelma Yellin was thrilled for her. 

There was a Russian lady who played the piano live. “It was the first time I was having ballet classes with a piano. No stereo. That was amazing.”

Sometimes, however,  reality does not meet expectations. It took a year at Thelma Yellin for Bar to realize that the life of a professional dancer was not for her. 

“I was only 16 but I knew that this lifestyle does not suit me. The food restrictions are very harsh and I am a foodie person.” She was supposed to stay within a certain weight. The training was more rigorous than she expected; training was the center of life. The teachers were very strict, with Russian and French pedagogy. “I just felt that was not the right place for me any more. From something I used to love to do, it turned into work” that was devoid of the joy she had felt for dance her whole life.

After her eye-opening year at Thelma Yellin, she returned to a regular high school that still offered dance, but nothing anywhere near as intense and professional. Until age eighteen, she maintained her dance practice. 

After graduation came military training then college where she majored in political science; dance was left behind, both as a profession and as a hobby, replaced by rigorous exercise. Running, training at the gym, regular strength exercises with increased levels of intensity. 

“I always loved to work with my body; I always loved to move my body, I always loved to sweat. Sweating is something I always loved. And that is what I did for the years in between.” Dancing was no longer there, abandoned for about eight or nine years; Yoga wasn’t there yet. 

Whenever she considered stepping back into a dance studio, “I was too terrified. I did not have enough confidence. When you used to practice every day, for at least two hours and then you don't move your body that certain way for years, I expected there would be a huge gap. Surprisingly, the body remembers more than you think” (as she found out upon starting yoga, and her body’s reaction to it). “But I was terrified to get into a dancing class and just dance.” 

But she never strayed too far from the world of body improvement. Her job after college, despite the political science degree, was as a manager of GYMNASFIT by Matan Bello, another of Israel’s famous institutions. Bello was a finalist at  Ninja Israel and trained many of the show’s participants. 

Her positive relationship with yoga began more recently, when she met her now-husband, who was such an avid yoga practitioner, their first date together had to wait until his yoga session was over. He introduced her to hot yoga:  “You start breathing that hot air in and out, and there was something about that I connected with right away.”  She soon began to go daily, even without him: 

“There was something about the class, the music, the teacher, the flow, that felt like dance to me. Both on the flow level and on the flexibility level. I came from a background of dancing my whole life. Doing classic ballet with pointe shoes and all of that. And that took me back there: to the discipline; to the challenge; to how I work with my body, how I hold myself in space; and that is where it clicked. This is where I belong. I hadn’t danced for years but this is how I used to love moving and working with my body. And then I started to go there regularly almost every day. Until Covid hit.” 

During Covid, she and her husband had already moved to India, and everything was at a standstill. Furthermore, she was surprised to see that even though she was at the birthplace of Yoga, Delhi was less than an ideal place for deep respiration, meditation, and concentration. The pollution, the noise, and the unexpected interruptions from deliveries (during covid) at all hours stood in the way. 

She looked for online classes, trying out many that fell flat, until she found a teacher online that met the high standards she expected from her previous elitist training as a dancer. Travjs Eliot, from the California Bay Area, and his wife, Lauren Eckstrom, give online classes, and travel all over the world, offering retreats and teacher training. Travis is on the faculty at the world famous Kripalu Center.  Bar eventually took the teacher training with them - an in-depth class that she purposefully took a year to complete. She still references the manual and the videos she has access to from her training that explain the chakras and the asanas. She wanted to take her time with the training so that by the time she got the certificate from the program, she was confident of her qualifications as a teacher. 

Bar credits Travis and Lauren for her inspirational introductions. At the beginning, she simply used their scripts, which they generously shared. They encouraged their trainees to use their words and sequences as is. When she started teaching, the idea of leading a class and speaking out loud before a group of adults was terrifying. 

“‘Copy us, they said. You are a new teacher’. They take you step by step through this process. I started out copying them. I felt bad but I knew I had their permission. Their words are beautifully written. I would watch their videos and put it on at a lower speed so I could write them down.”

Now, Bar continues to be inspired by the husband and wife team, but she branches out, finds her own quotes and makes up her own themes to fit the situation, her students, and the needs of the moment. 

 The four hours she spends teaching are but the visible part of her practice. A lot more work occurs behind the scenes. She takes time putting together relevant themes and related music and words. “It is a whole process,” she says. The time spent teaching is only a fraction of the work. She remembers special moments from her training, where Lauren’s words moved her to tears. She wants to share that with others, and hopes to have a similar impact.

The years she spent as a dancer have prepared her physically for her current passion. Bar may be new to Yoga, but the command she has of her body, her artistry, her reflections come from a lifetime of interaction with dance, music, exercise, strength training, and the aesthetics and rigor of body movement in general. Her classes flow with choreography, and she manages to make a class of participants at all levels feel like a dancing ensemble, regardless of her students’ ages and ability levels. 

What dance did not train her for, she says, is the healthy philosophy that yoga has with the body. Her current philosophy and motto of “COME AS YOU ARE” is in stark contrast to what dance training drilled into her. 

“...the deeper I dig into yoga, its philosophy and wisdom,” the more I see the gap with dance. In ballet, the emphasis is on the product. Improvement is the end goal. “...you have to look a certain way. Your leg has to reach a certain height, regardless of what it takes, basically.” The stress is on technical perfection, whereas in Yoga, the goal is mental well being, self-acceptance, and mental improvement. Yoga has taught her to let go mentally of the masochism of technical perfection. The shift in mindset has been a whole journey of self-discovery and a new relationship to movement and body awareness. The idea of giving yourself a break daily. Even though yoga does produce the improved flexibility and technique, it is not the end goal. You learn that some days you do better than others, and you “thank yourself for showing up” -  Bar ends each class with that statement. 

“And that is the main thing that yoga has opened me up to…Nothing by pressure, nothing by force. You come from an open place and that is how you open the body up. That is something I would have never discovered through dance and ballet. Not with the teachers I had.”

As one of Bar’s oldest students (if not THE eldest and by far the least flexible), I can attest to her truly practicing her motto and encouraging her students to “COME AS YOU ARE”:

Take breaks when you need to

Do what feels right

Modify where you need to

Use a block

Use a blanket

Use the wall for support

Bend the knee

Bring your foot closer if you need to, further if you are able to 

Come out of savasana when you are ready. Or stay there as long as you need!

Thank yourself for showing up today!

Bar’s classes attract other Israelis living in Delhi, and even though we may have different political sympathies, it is actually a comfort to be around people who are aware of what is going on in the Middle East and following daily with anxiety and anguish over civilian deaths, worrying about family members. Yet, we have to breathe in and out, keep tabs on our mental health, and keep going, despite the tragedy that is unfolding in the background, and that is very much on our hearts and minds. 

Think of what you have, not of what you want. What you have today. Not what you had yesterday or what you hope to have in the future. Think of what you have today. And be grateful.